Monday, April 12, 2010

Whoop-de-doo!

Iain Dale gets excited about a promise the Boy-King has been making and has repeated in his Sunday Telegraph interview. Cameron, Mr Dale tells us, has committed to early legislation on an EU referendum, telling Patrick Hennessy about his "promise to legislate in the first year if a Tory government on the obligation to have a referendum before any further transferance of powers to Brussels".

Let us not look too closely at the spelling either in the title or the text - even Homer nodded, we are told. Let us, instead, look at what the Boy-King really promised without, this time, giving a cast-iron guarantee:

Among the first things Mr Cameron wants to do, he discloses, is pass new legislation ensuring a referendum will be held in Britain if the European Union makes a major new effort to transfer powers to Brussels.

Uh-hu! And what's a major new effort to transfer powers to Brussels? How does one define that? What about routine transference of powers that is happening all the time under the treaties already agreed to, not to mention other agreements such as the Hague and the Tampere ones that affect immigration, asylum seekers and other domestic matters?

Even if we disregard the Boy-King's word games, what of the powers that have already been handed over, some of them very major, indeed? For as long as I can recall this has been the Conservatives' leitmotif: what's done is done, let us move on to the next issue. There are, as it happens, very few issues left to move on to. That, presumably, is exactly what the Boy-King is relying on as he prefers to make empty promises or cast-iron guarantees to facing up to the reality of our membership of the EU.